Primal Elementalist as Elemental

I was looking to change my build to primal elementalist since i think i have some low dps for my gear with EB and maybe things will feel a bit better. Yet i have some questions regarding the build:

-Should I use the Fire Elemental Glyphs?
-Should I use Earth Elemental on CD? With the buff or attacking?
-Should I use FE at the same time with Ascendence? Or at different times, since the elemental does not get a buff from Ascendence. How we should line up the cooldowns?

1. Fire Ele glyph is completely independent of PE. It doesn't give a DPS loss or gain except when it allows you to get an additional cast (or two) that you wouldn't normally get with the 5 minute CD. Which means you have to know how long a boss fight will take and figure it out per boss.

2. Yes. Attacking.

3. Fire Ele and Ascendance don't interact. Use them on CD. Sometimes they'll line up, sometimes they won't. Sitting on them to line them up is a DPS loss.

1. As Vana says, Fire Ele glyph is entirely dependant on fight length. *Mostly* it seems to be a DPS loss. I think *only* if the fight is between 3:30-4:59 or 9:30-9:59 would it be an increase. My math is probably bad.

2. Earth Elemental should always be used on CD, regardless of Primal Elementalist or not. It is not a high priority, but if your Fire Elemental is on CD, and your only available cast is a Lightning bolt, use it. As I said in another thread my usual fight start goes as such:

3. Again, Vana has it 100% right. Never hold Fire Elemental and Ascendance to line up on purpose. They don't particularly interact, and outside of other things you want to use with cooldowns (Lust, Procs, Potions, trinkets, etc.), there isn't much reason to.

1. Flame Shock uptime seems low. 91% on a fight with some minor adds and a stacking phase shouldn't reduce it that much. Make sure you're keeping it up.
2. 2 non-Crit Lava Bursts. This could be due to Flame Shock falling off, see above
3. You and I cast the exact same amount of Elemental Blast, yet my fight length was almost a full 2 minutes shorter. Make sure you have Elemental Blast above everything in your priority list except Flame Shock and Lava Burst, and cast it on CD.
5. I see an oddity with Magma Totem and Earthquake. I'm wondering if maybe you pre-cast it to set up for Maddening Shout, but I'm not sure that's advisable. Probably better to just keep up your rotation while collapsing in and spamming Chain Lightning a few times, then back to rotation.
4. Same with Fulmination. I'm not a detailed Log delver, but my assumption is you should have had a few more of those too.
5. Just noticed this... Did no one use Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp during your Spirit Kings kill? o.O

1. Fire Ele glyph is completely independent of PE. It doesn't give a DPS loss or gain except when it allows you to get an additional cast (or two) that you wouldn't normally get with the 5 minute CD. Which means you have to know how long a boss fight will take and figure it out per boss.

3. Fire Ele and Ascendance don't interact. Use them on CD. Sometimes they'll line up, sometimes they won't. Sitting on them to line them up is a DPS loss.

Both of these answers are fairly misleading imo, even though you probably meant the correct things.

1. First of all the FE glyph is a dps loss, it results in an average uptime decrease of 9 seconds which is actually quiet a bit. The only time you should use the glyph is like said below, if you could fit in an extra FE so the overall duration would be longer then it's worth it, but this rarely happends. (If for some reason the boss has some mechanic which makes him take more damage each 3 minutes, they glyph is nice ^^)

3. While fire elemental and ascendance doesn't interact themselfs, they interact with all use/proc trinkets and potions, both benefit from this. And if you use ascendance with your second potion, but doesn't use the second potion with FET you may loose overall dps because you didn't manage your cooldowns effiecent enough. While this is fairly complicating and one of the hardest aspects of Shammys (hell, hardest aspect on most classes) it's very important to understand to maxmimize output.
You usually always want the maxmimum amounts of ascendances/FET that you can get and it's almost NEVER worth delaying them if it will make you use less of them during the fight.
However: If you know how long the fight will be, let's say 6 minutes exactly (ultraxion) you can start thinking ahead, and understanding when's the best time to use certain abilties.
We remember our criterias for cooldowns: Never delay them if it will cost you more uses of them in the future, try to stack ascendance with trinkets and pots/bloodlust. So on this 6 minute fight, you can actually only get 2 ascendances off. (one at the 0 minute mark, one at the 3 minute mark, and then when you reach the 6 minute mark the fight is over anyways, so you can't use it here.) In this case you should save your second ascendance, aswell as your second pot until atleast the 5 minute mark, so you will have your FE out when you actually use your pot / on use trinket whatever. Your FE works as a guardian and its stats updates dynamically, so it doesn't matter when you use things inside it, it automatically gets it. So in this case, you should pop your FE, check your ICD tracker (Internal cooldown on proc trinkets, really important to have a good one if you want to maxmimize) and focus on lining your ascendance up with a int pot for the whole duration, and as many trinket procs are possible (this will usually only be 1 due to the nature of different ICD's though. The main thing is that by doing your cooldowns this way, both your ascendances and FEs are gaining benefit from your two potions. one in the start and one in the end. You have maxmimum uptime on everything, and your dps will be better.

Now i understand that may sound really complicated and it seems not needed (i also understand why others hasn't mentioned it) but it's actually a fairly significant increase in output, and you should atleast know about it. The more confident you get with your rotation as a whole, and the more you learn about your fights, the better you will be at this. And when you master this, that's when you will see the real high numbers.

1) The FET glyph is situational. It may be a gain, a loss, or even neutral, depending on fight length. In 5.2, when used in combination with Elemental Mastery on a 90 sec cd (the current value on the PTR), the glyph may be a dps gain in most situations.

2) The elemental totems share a 1-minute CD, meaning you can only drop one at a time and must wait a minute to drop the other. Thus, dropping Earth Elem when FET has a minute or less on its cd is a bad idea (both with and without PE). Also, turning off the taunt on a primal Earth Eleme turns off one of the Primal Fire Elem's abilities--I can't remember if it's Immolate or Fire Blast--but either way, turning that ability back on when you drop FE is quite important and easy to forget.

3) TL;DR of Telefonorm's point 3: Delaying FET or Ascendance can be a dps gain if and only if the target(s) would be immune (or take very reduced damage) if you popped them on CD, or if it means they will coincide with a burn phase (and either 1. not be available again before the boss dies, or 2. the burn phase starts in the next few seconds).

Don't think of yourself as having "a build." You have a spec, and within that spec you should be adjusting your talents and glyphs for just about every fight when you are doing progression bosses. I think it's totally fine to have a default that you are more comfortable with for farm stuff, but you're not taking advantage of the way MoP talents are set up if you just lock into one build.

I'm actually loving PE myself atm. My sim's show it a massive dps loss (3-4k) at my 502 ilvl but that just doesn't translate to raiding. I've also ranked a few times with it also. I've always felt EB was kinda clunky and just seemed out of place. I don't really reforge/gem any special way mainly keeping a balance of mastery/haste now. 20.38% Haste and right at 40% mastery. Glad to see others have played around with it also.

As close as EB and PE are I'm looking forward to the buff to PE. I agree, EB just feels off, pretty much a different colored Lightning Bolt and the buff it leaves behind doesn't have any impact on our rotation. A perk, but it isn't dynamic at all. The fact of the matter is the spell isn't even a top priority in our rotation so I'm not too unhappy to see us most likely drop it in 5.2. I am a bit concerned about the potential for being significantly hurt when the Elemental dies. I'm sure all of us remember how reliant we were on the FE during Firelands, I don't welcome a return to that as it will make me feel forced to give up Totemic Projection in favor of Totemic Restoration for the times it happens.

As close as EB and PE are I'm looking forward to the buff to PE. I agree, EB just feels off, pretty much a different colored Lightning Bolt and the buff it leaves behind doesn't have any impact on our rotation. A perk, but it isn't dynamic at all. The fact of the matter is the spell isn't even a top priority in our rotation so I'm not too unhappy to see us most likely drop it in 5.2. I am a bit concerned about the potential for being significantly hurt when the Elemental dies. I'm sure all of us remember how reliant we were on the FE during Firelands, I don't welcome a return to that as it will make me feel forced to give up Totemic Projection in favor of Totemic Restoration for the times it happens.

Yeah my elemental the other day ago was actually derping back to FL on H Lei Shi. It would actually stand there for a good 5-8s before it would go attack than it actually ran back to me. Could be my own fault not using any pet attack macros too.

I'm actually loving PE myself atm. My sim's show it a massive dps loss (3-4k) at my 502 ilvl but that just doesn't translate to raiding. I've also ranked a few times with it also. I've always felt EB was kinda clunky and just seemed out of place. I don't really reforge/gem any special way mainly keeping a balance of mastery/haste now. 20.38% Haste and right at 40% mastery. Glad to see others have played around with it also.

One thing I wonder, and since you're using it often you can help:

1. Do you let the Fire Elemental attack, or do you let it buff?
2. What about fights like Elegon and Wind Lord?

As close as EB and PE are I'm looking forward to the buff to PE. I agree, EB just feels off, pretty much a different colored Lightning Bolt and the buff it leaves behind doesn't have any impact on our rotation. A perk, but it isn't dynamic at all. The fact of the matter is the spell isn't even a top priority in our rotation so I'm not too unhappy to see us most likely drop it in 5.2. I am a bit concerned about the potential for being significantly hurt when the Elemental dies. I'm sure all of us remember how reliant we were on the FE during Firelands, I don't welcome a return to that as it will make me feel forced to give up Totemic Projection in favor of Totemic Restoration for the times it happens.

If your not putting EB at the top of the rotation, then you just are not seeing what your missing out on. It is a huge hitting spell that gives a very very nice buff.

If your not putting EB at the top of the rotation, then you just are not seeing what your missing out on. It is a huge hitting spell that gives a very very nice buff.

There is a difference between using it as your prepull spell (a good idea) and having it be your highest priority spell. The DPCT for EB, even factoring in the buff, is not higher than most of our spells. I'd like to see the math support for using it before Lava Burst, Lava Surge procs, Flame Shock, etc., because my own math and the general consensus refutes it.

If your not putting EB at the top of the rotation, then you just are not seeing what your missing out on. It is a huge hitting spell that gives a very very nice buff.

First of all, elementals doesn't have a rotation, it's a priority order.
Second of all, Elemental blast is third in the priority order, not first. Flame shock is first, and after that lava burst.
Both of those two skills got a higher DPET then Elemental blast, which is what you count when you rank the spells. The buff you isn't worth casting it over the other two spells named above. You can test this yourself by changing the rotation order in simcraft.

Offtopic: I think Elemental blast makes the rotation alot more fun, even though it's a 12 second cd it's still an extra thing that you have to look for /do. Feels that we have so few spells not counting that. I like that it's around a ~3% damage increase to use it, and hope they keep that number.

First of all, elementals doesn't have a rotation, it's a priority order.
Second of all, Elemental blast is third in the priority order, not first. Flame shock is first, and after that lava burst.
Both of those two skills got a higher DPET then Elemental blast, which is what you count when you rank the spells. The buff you isn't worth casting it over the other two spells named above. You can test this yourself by changing the rotation order in simcraft.

Offtopic: I think Elemental blast makes the rotation alot more fun, even though it's a 12 second cd it's still an extra thing that you have to look for /do. Feels that we have so few spells not counting that. I like that it's around a ~3% damage increase to use it, and hope they keep that number.

I'm not disputing that it is a measurable DPS increase, I just find it uninteresting and thus am looking forward to Primal Elementalist being a more competitive option. This is obviously entirely subjective, it just seems like a lost opportunity. We receive a random 3 buffs, but none of us particularly care which of the three we get. We are disappointed if we get Crit just before an Ascendance, and we groan if we get Haste during Heroism but we don't change anything regardless of which occurs which to me is unfortunate.

1. As Vana says, Fire Ele glyph is entirely dependant on fight length. *Mostly* it seems to be a DPS loss. I think *only* if the fight is between 3:30-4:59 or 9:30-9:59 would it be an increase. My math is probably bad.

The glyph is an increase if the fight lasts between 03:24-05:12 or 09:12-10:24 (assuming it's used on CD), otherwise the unglyphed version wins out.

Can't tell yet, but wouldn't be suprised if it was outperfoming eb if eb doesn't ger buffed

The PTR behavior is being modeled in SimC. I haven't really sanity checked it or compared it vs. the PTR behavior, but it appears to be functioning as expected. Using my current gear set with no adjustments I have them being within 900 DPS of each other. On live currently I have about a 4-5k difference favoring Elemental Blast. It looks like the "right talent" will in large part depend on the duration of the fight. Though if we end up dropping a lot of Haste due to GCD capping and gaining Mastery instead it might swing back in favor of EB just due to lack of scaling with Mastery from our pets.

True, but there are alot of options to calculate on. What about glyphing FET and skilling into EM to make them line up all the time. Haste increase would be huge. I also expect crit to gain quiet abit of value with this build, as fire elementals get quiet abit of damage increase from crit, we can't have any haste to avoid overcapping and mastery won't benefit our elemental. I'm fairly sure we'll get more changes though, so we'll see.